In other news.

Back to that "black wind" that Glenn Powell mentioned. . . Maybe I'm in this upbeat mood because I'm writing from my room at the farm with the spring breeze blowing in the window and the horses grazing in the field and the leaves peeking out on the ginko tree, BUT I've been finding all kinds of signs of hope in the paper lately.

Reading the sunday Times weeks late, I got to hear about Michelle Bachelet, "a Socialist, pediatrician and former political prisoner and exile" being inaugurated as President of Chile. "In a country where the Roman Catholic Church wields great power, Ms. Bachelet is also openly agnostic, and when she took her oath of office she promised rather than swore to uphold the Chilean Constitution. She has also promised a government that focuses on social equality and respect for human rights. . . Ms. Bachelet has already fulfilled another of her campaign promises: sexual equity in appointments to government posts. She has appointed a cabinet of 10 men and 10 women, and designated the governors of the country's 12 regions on the same basis. . . "I've given clear instructions, and here I take advantage to do a commercial," she said. 'Chile is going to be the first country that will have, in public sector decision making positions, total parity' between men and women."

Below, in "US Rethinks Its Cutoff of Military Aid to Latin American Nations" is the satisfying image of Condaleeza Rice strumming a guitar decorated with coca leaves. Check it out:
"The newly installed Bolivian leader [Evo Morales, onetime head of Bolivia's coca growers' union] favors the legal cultivation of coca, the plant used to manufacture cocaine, but says he opposes cocaine and has agreed to let American antidrug officials remain in the country.
In a friendly but pointed gesture, he gave Ms. Rice a small guitar decorated on the front with real leaves from a coca plant in laquer. Ms. Rice, perhaps not realizing that the decoration was from the plant that the United States sought to eradicate, then smiled and strummed the guitar for television cameras."

Meanwhile, "A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies: capitalist path disputed, rising income gap raises concerns about a law on property rights."
The origins of the critique of capitalism? Well a big piece of it came from a professor who "accused the legal experts who wrote the draft [of the pro-capitalist property rights legislation] of 'copying capitalist civil law like slaves' and offering equal protection to 'a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick.'" Even some from the pro-market camp over there are willing to admit (as our own leaders will not) "A widening gap between rich and poor is not the fault of market reforms, it's the natural result of them, which is neither good nor bad, but quite predictable."

Also front page: "Bush Troubles Weigh Heavily As Party Meets" and an expose of a huge price increase for a cancer drug that has nothing to do with production costs and everything to do with drug company profits.

And today, when Chirac backed down on the new labor law, the young French folks were presented not as lazy nut-balls who were attached to their job stability because they were unwilling to work, but as people who have been "resisting economic reform," in multiple instances-- "In France, an Economic Bullet Goes Unbitten"-- refusing to bite a bullet, because who would want to bite a bullet anyway?